Ladies’ Night in New Delhi

In India, the Supreme Court has overruled a nearly century-old law that forbids women in New Delhi from working as bartenders. Regulations for selling and consuming alcohol in India vary across the country, but they often restrict women from handling liquor. (In Mumbai, for example, female bartenders are kicked out at 8:30 p.m., although that seems to be rarely enforced. According to the New York Times, there’s also a law requiring “drinkers to present a doctor-certified permit that declares them medically in need” that’s emphatically not enforced.)

It’s unclear what the point of the original colonial law was—other than keeping women out of bars, of course. No longer able to justify the law on those grounds, its supporters justified it on we-know-what’s-best-honey grounds: Working with potentially intoxicated men would be too dangerous for women. (Too bad! So sad!) The court called that argument “invidious” and paternalistic.

There’s a lot of new-India money out there for bartenders, and the day after the decision, Anushika Pradhan, a woman from “a small northeastern city” who’s been training underground as a bartender for six months, took up her post and the title of the capital’s first female bartender.